


Postscripts

by umbel



Series: Postscripts [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, God is in the machine, now could somebody get him out please
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 00:36:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7596442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/umbel/pseuds/umbel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The bunker has a mailbox. They're pretty sure this wasn't always the case.</p><p>Or: in which God gets bored on his extended sibling vacation, and the Winchesters pay the price.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Maybe it's time to move.

When it finally registers what Dean's saying, Sam thinks it's just a prank.

Step 1: Dean says, "Hey, did you know we have a mailbox?" Step 2: Sam gets up to look, sure enough there's no mailbox because _obviously_ , Sam turns around to tell Dean this and Step 3: Dean shoves a pie in his face. (It probably won't actually _be_ pie, because an offhand comment by Mary, taken by Cas literally, turned most of last week into a masterclass on what Dean started out calling "the 2016 Piepocalypse" and ended up calling "an unspeakable tragedy, as in _never speak of this again_." But, y'know, it'll be something.)

So he plays it cool. He says, "We don't have a mailbox, Dean," absently as he shuffles through a stack of personnel files. He's _this_ close to figuring out which Man of Letters left all the sarcastic comments and doodles in the margins of most of their books on demonology, which has been driving him a little bit nuts for friggin' weeks - ever since he realized that Green Ink Guy was actually a more reliable source of lore than the books themselves. He'll be damned if he's gonna stop now for Dean's shenanigans.

"It looks like a mailbox."

"What does?"

"The mailbox."

Sam sighs, and finally deigns to look up. Dean's not taut with anticipation, waiting for Sam to take the bait. He looks like he's kinda enjoying Sam's irritation, but mostly he looks limp with boredom, actually. He looks like he's been case-hunting for five hours straight (six now, according to Sam's phone) with no results whatsoever, and has reached the point where the flimsiest of distractions takes on world-shaking importance.

Wait. So is this a serious question? "Dean. We're in a _secret bunker_. We don't even have an _address_. Nobody sent the Men of Letters mail."

"Are you sure?"

Uh. He was.

Their boots echo on the cast iron staircase up to the bunker door, and Dean is saying, "I dunno, a week or two ago? I thought it was weird too, honestly, but it didn't seem that important. What's got you all fired up?"

Sam doesn't answer, taking the steps two at a time. The London chapter's done breathing down their necks for now, but that's not gonna last forever, and he's determined that next time Toni and her people won't catch him off guard so easily. But when it comes to figuring out how the London operation works, he could really use something new to go on. Something to do other than spin his wheels over the same 60-year-old files - mostly mind-numbing minutiae, mostly the American branches - and his own increasingly wild guesswork.

Dean points it out as they clear the entrance, and okay, he feels less peeved about somehow missing this now. Dean said mailbox and Sam thought, you know, the classic metal box on a pole, jaunty red flag and everything. This is more like his student box at Stanford, if the Stanford mail room had been run by someone with an interest in occult symbology: just a narrow vertical slot flush against one of the outer edges of the arch, with a metal plate that covers the opening. Inside, a little hatch door in the wall opens on a compartment covered in protective engravings.

"Huh. Wonder what this was for." Sam swings the little door experimentally, and as he's turning to look back at Dean there's the soft _snick_ of a metal plate clicking shut behind him.

There definitely wasn't anything in their not-a-mailbox. It was absolutely definitely empty. Sam barely registers that it is definitely not before Dean's yanking the bunker door open and bolting up the steps; Sam would follow but even from here he can see that there's no one at the door, no mail trucks idling at the top of the steps, nobody for miles probably. "We don't even have an address," Sam mumbles, grasping the square of paper gingerly between two fingers to pull it out. Maybe they did just miss it at first. Maybe this is just some old Men of Letters missive, totally boring, totally what-passes-for-normal-in-Winchester-life.

It's not. "Oh God," he says faintly, as out of the corner of his eye he sees Dean's fingers wiggling through the mail slot in a frustrated way. No way. No way is this- Then Dean's back inside, yanking it out of his hands to get a look.

It's a postcard. In big block text filled with fire against a starry background, it reads:

 

**Greetings from**

**~THE SUN~**

 

The card is delicately singed around its edges, and warm to the touch. The writing on the other side is so illegible Sam can actually track each incremental expression on Dean's face as he deciphers it line by line:

 

_Had to make sure nothing broke!_

_~~we fixed it~~ _

_it's fine_

_you're welcome_

 

The brothers stare at each other for a moment.

"Chuck?"

"What the f---"


	2. Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night

The postcards keep coming, of course.

Now that it's got their attention, their new-maybe-old mailbox (Sam's looking for records of an inter-chapter postal service; Dean's pretty sure Chuck snapped his fingers and retconned it just to screw with them) sees action every couple of days. They're never signed, never give an address for the recipient beyond "Sam and Dean Winchester," but always stamped and postmarked with a scribbled line or two. Dumb casual stuff, like _took her to see this today_ on a postcard of the Grand Canyon, _rain and fog the whole time we were there but still pretty cool_ from some Chinese national park with mountains like tall rugged spikes. _Totally freaked out some spelunkers who found us hanging out in the dark_ , with a picture of Carlsbad Cavern. Once a photo of a cat with a squashed face and thunderous eyebrows that just says, _Sam_.

"What'd you do, Sandra Bullock? Try to be pen pals?"

Sam starts stammering and almost collides with a table when he bolts for the door.

Eventually Sam and Dean get sucked into a series of hunts that materialize out on the west coast, one on the heels of another so there's no real point in driving back to Kansas in between. They don't realize this was a mistake until they get back three weeks later to find postcards, _everywhere_. Secured with magnets to the fridge, taped to Dean's door, sticking out of stacks of books in the library, scattered across the map table, propped up against Sam's toothbrush in the bathroom. Mary swears up and down that she didn't touch any of them (failing to hold back her snickering, because sometime while they were gone Mary finally went from theologically weirded out to "this is totally hilarious"); Cas notably hasn't said a word about their unwanted correspondence since it started, but Dean doesn't think he's quite passive-aggressive enough for this level of weird.

The mailbox remains empty after that, in favor of postcards like bad pennies, impossible to ignore. Postcards that follow them out on hunts, wedged in hotel mirrors and brochure racks, falling out of case files at inopportune moments. Postcards slipped into books covered in half an inch of untouched archival dust, and sealed in the Amazon packages they pick up at their PO box in town. Always stamped. Always postmarked.

"Oh, for- COME ON."

A couple months into this now. Dean waits til Sam's looked up from pouring a coffee to slam the postcard emphatically down on the table. "In my Cheerios. My _Cheerios_. Like a freaking prize." It's even shrink-wrapped in goddamn plastic - he opened this box _two seconds ago_. He can just picture Chuck cackling on a friggin' beach somewhere at his expense, the little bastard.

"You know, maybe it's kind of nice," Sam offers. "He's not gone for good, you know? And he's keeping tabs on how things are going, how we're doing. If we run into anything, like, apocalyptic, maybe we can convince him to lend a hand. Or a Hand."

Dean grunts, toying with the postcard while he stuffs his face with cereal. _Look at me, I am the Lord and I'm having more fun than you, blah blah blah_. "Think the Empty's got an address?" he says eventually. Sam doesn't say anything.

Yeah. He's pretty sure Chuck doesn't give a flying crap what actually happens to them.


End file.
